The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(89)

Rostov now thought of the red-haired kuritsa cop once more. A fantasy blossomed in his mind: the woman as cowgirl. Vladimir Rostov happened to love the Louis L’Amour novels of the American West. He thought they were finely crafted jewels, adventure tales that gave you a peek at life back then. Russia had the Cossacks and, from Mongolia, the Tartars. But there was nothing romantic about marauding drunks and rapists. The American West…ah, those were the days of heroes! He owned all the Sergio Leone films. John Ford’s movies, too, starring John Wayne. And there was no better Western than Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.

He sometimes thought about living back then. The Germans were in Mexico. The Spanish and Portuguese in South and Central America. The French in Canada and the Caribbean.

There must have been some Russians in the nineteenth-century New World.

Oh, how he would have loved to be among them.

With his six-shooter and horse. And bourbon, of course.

And the whores.

His thoughts returned to the cowgirl kuritsa, the one with the red hair and the blue diamond on her white finger.

His blue diamond, his white finger.

He turned the corner and slowed. Vladimir Rostov was feeling proud of himself, for being smarter than the cowgirl cop.

Because I know where Vimal Lahori is going.

His backup plan.

When Rostov had his chat with Kirtan in the basement of the diner in the Fashion District, he’d learned more about Vimal than just his name and address and family. A cut here, a cut there. He’d found out Vimal had a girlfriend.

I’ll tell you but don’t hurt her!! Kirtan had written (the crushed throat matter).

“No, no, kuritsa. I won’t hurt a hair on her head. I just need to have a talk with Vimal. I won’t hurt him either. That’s a peeing promise.”

Rostov had had to read the response twice, to make it out—the kid’s hand was shaking so. The message was: Will die before I tell you if you hurt her.

Which made no sense.

“Hair on head. Really.”

Peeing promise. Rostov had just made that phrase up but he liked it. He’d use it again.

He’d bent down and slid the knife along the kid’s fingernail.

In three minutes, poof. Vimal’s girlfriend was Adeela Badour. And she lived in East Elmhurst, Queens, a mile or so from Vimal’s family.

A check of Google revealed that a Mohammad Badour lived at the address. And, yes, he had two daughters, Adeela and Taalia, twenty-two and ten. Though, sadly, no online pictures of the little creatures. Some parents were so protective.

“Anyone else?” Rostov had asked. “That Vimal is close to?”

Kirtan had shaken his head vigorously. His last gesture. Rostov had slit his throat then. It was a favor, he reasoned. The kid would have lived with guilt his whole life, for having given up Vimal and his friend.

After he died—which took some messy time—Rostov had cut his pinkie finger off and placed it, still holding the travesty of a ring, into Kirtan’s slack-jawed mouth. The Promisor didn’t have to limit himself to making statements only about diamonds on the fingers of slutty fiancées.

Adeela Badour…

He’d be at her house soon.

At a traffic light, he took a napkin from his pocket and coughed into it for a moment. Fucker, he thought angrily. A problem all his life. Cigarettes, of course. He’d stop smoking someday. The condition would go away.

He wondered if this Adeela was sexy. He generally preferred pale-complexioned women. But since he’d been thinking of the little Persian kur, Kitten and Scheherazade, he was of a mind to spend some time with a darker girl, an Arab girl. Hell, didn’t matter if she was sexy. He was hungry. He needed a woman. Now.

Oh, and the Promisor would keep his peeing promise to Kirtan. What was going to happen to her wouldn’t damage a single hair on her head.





Chapter 45



It’d be an adventure.”

“Adventure,” Adeela Badour replied to Vimal, clearly troubled by his choice of words. “What is this? A quest? The Hobbit.”

They were in her backyard. The Badours had a nice house, brick with red wooden trim, in East Elmhurst, Queens, about a mile from Vimal’s family. This neighborhood embraced LaGuardia airport and on days when the wind wasn’t kind, residents would have to endure the scream of jets skimming over houses to land on Runway 4. Today the air was, more or less, quiet.

The Badours’ home was bigger than the Lahoris’; Adeela’s father had a good job with a big tech company, her mother—like his—was a nurse. The place featured a yard with a well-tended garden, both rare here.

As far as Vimal was concerned, though, one of the better features was a detached garage, behind the house, which opened onto an alley, shared by all the homes here.

Better, because it was in the musty structure that Vimal and Adeela had first kissed—daringly in the backseat of her mother’s Subaru—after the adults had gone to sleep, of course—and where they had explored, touching and tasting, growing warm, teasing open buttons and finally a zipper or two.

At the moment, though, the mood was different. The only agenda item was escape.

He directed her into the garage, just to be out of sight, though he wasn’t concerned the ski-masked man had found his way here—that would be impossible. But he didn’t want neighbors to see him and call his father.